College staff: role reversal

Administration members from colleges throughout the northeast region came together at York College in Jamaica and turned into students again for the day.
The officials attended workshops on Friday, May 2 on improving collaboration between faculty and staff in order to improve the college experience for students. The workshops were part of the 2008 City University of New York (CUNY) Regional Student Affairs Conference.
The 62 concurrent hour-long workshops addressed various topics such as student recruitment and students’ emotional maturity on diverse campuses. The staff members got to choose which workshops to attend, depending on their field of expertise.
Luke Cardaio, who helps students at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City create study plans to meet their degree requirements, found the event useful. He sat through a presentation that demonstrated how administrators can help students take full advantage of DegreeWorks Student Education Planner, university software that creates individual lists for students showing them what courses they need to take in order to graduate.
Cardaio said that meeting colleagues from different campuses helped him place his university’s problems in context. “There’s solidarity in knowing that the issues our students are facing are not unique,” he explained.
Staff dealing with student affairs from different colleges in the northeast attended these workshops with the hope of gaining insight into how they can help their own campuses create stronger relations between faculty and administration.
These student affairs conferences, dedicated to addressing problems in higher education, are held every two years.